Ascension of Chaos

I narrow my eyes at the ocean of black flames and ash, only for the ash to all settle at the bottom with the flames filling everything else.

Then I find a rather… unpleasant… surprise surfacing from the flames.

Large serpents made out of black flames just jumping out of the ocean of flames.

I don\'t get any results when I identify them though, which implies that they aren\'t alive. Just some sort of skill of the King of Destruction\'s.

After a brief hesitation spent staring at the ocean of flames beneath me, I eventually begin rushing in the direction of the inner region of the Unique Domain. The volcanic region itself.

As I fly, I can\'t help but feel tense. Because I know the monsters in this region are even stronger than the mini bosses of the central region. Mini bosses that I couldn\'t even defeat with Blake yet.

Once I enter the inner region, I stop moving to look around. But I don\'t find anything inside of it beyond the volcano itself.

Not a single thing.

There are no monsters, no living things at all, and just a bunch of barren land filling the entire region.

Where…

Right when I\'m about to wonder about the lack of monsters, numerous large holes suddenly begin to slowly open up in the ground with what looks like barriers made of destruction mana. Holes that were previously partially filled with the flames.

Guess the caves just took longer to clear up than the rest of the region.

I slowly lower myself down towards the ground, only to pause when I see monsters beginning to leave some of the caves through the barriers. With many of them including the same monsters I saw before from the inner region.

But there are also monsters I haven\'t seen before. Some of which are enormous drakes, others massive serpents, and there are even some of the monsters from the outer region. Except all higher ranking ones. And all much higher level than the ones in the outer region.

What\'s got some chills running down my spine though is the sight of the mini bosses wandering around amongst them.

Numerous mini bosses.

There are kobold knights and kobold lords wandering around, all wearing armor. Massive serpents called basilisks of destruction that are mini bosses too. And even a couple mini boss ranked drakes.

And the mini bosses are all level 160. Or in that area.

I feel my fists clenching a little at my sides, but before I can give much thought to the monsters and their power, I find myself receiving a priority message in my inbox. A feature that I\'ve found recently and am rather fond of, since I get way too many messages nowadays. And this feature lets me set someone as a priority contact so that I\'ll actually get notified of the message when it arrives unlike the others.

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After a brief pause, I open my inbox before checking the message, ignoring the other millions upon millions of messages I have sitting in there being ignored as I do so. Possibly even billions of messages. It\'s hard to tell since the number is too large to show up on the icon.

When I read the message though, I find myself feeling rather surprised. Because of just what the message has to say.

It\'s from Blake for one, and the message itself…

Hello Lee, I wanted to share an idea I have for a plan to survive this hellhole.

At our levels and skills, there isn\'t any way to survive in the inner region of the Unique Domain without simply running away and not fighting anything.

So the only way we can level ourselves up is through secondhand kills.

But this will all be up to you, since you have more of the gunpowder than I do.

I frown at the message, along with the plan he details in another message after it.

The plan is a very simple one. He intends for us to run around the entire volcano setting up explosives using the King of Destruction\'s gunpowder. And we can do one of two things. We can either just toss out the gunpowder at the monsters to blow them up, leveling us up and getting me their skills in the process.

Or we can go around and set rigged explosives up all across the volcano to blow up the entire volcano.

Doing the former will be very dangerous as it would require us to, well, not be blown up. And to not be killed by other monsters who rush to me after the explosions.

And doing the latter will make it so we only get the levels and skills at the end. We may also have to deal with the monsters themselves accidentally setting off the explosives.

So either way has its downsides.

The former also has the issue of Blake not having anywhere near as good a skill to use the gunpowder than I have. Thanks to the constant applications of the gunpowder\'s effect.

Overall though, I prefer the latter plan. So I send Blake a message stating that very answer.

Because the latter plan will be safer for us, what with us being able to sneak through the place instead of fighting everything and being chased in another damned death march. Not to mention safer for Blake since he doesn\'t have to worry about his resistance skill for True Damage.

I frown for a few seconds before shaking my head and searching through my Skill Trees for new skills. Specifically stealth focused skills, along with skills that would be great for escaping.

The number of Skill Points I have right now is enough to buy around three or four skills, which is a pretty good number. But since I\'m in a rush, I just go ahead and purchase the best two of the first ten stealth and escape centered skills I find. Each of which are actually rather expensive but also really good.

{Ashen Dispersal – Allows the user to disperse their bodies into ash and reform within three hundred meters of yourself.}

{Ashen Coverage – Allows the user to create a thick mist of ash around their body to cover themself.}

I go ahead and test out the second skill in particular to find that it barely costs any mana to use, but when I go to use the first skill, I quickly realize it takes a good chunk of mana. Just on instinct alone before I even manage to activate it.

A chunk so large that it\'s probably around ten units of mana for one dispersal and reformation three hundred meters away.

And since mana is a precious resource right now, I leave testing that till I need it.

For now I go ahead and activate the other stealth skills I have before moving down towards the cave entrances while reading more of the message from Blake. Because apparently those storage devices he made weren\'t just for storage. They also have a feature that lets me use them as bombs.

Although I kind of wish he had told me before about that, seeing as I\'ve been carrying them around with me for a while now.

They even have a feature for me to set a timer so that they blow up at a certain time. And a feature for me to use a sort of remote control.

Or for Blake to use one, since he has the \'remote\' ring.

I can just set up the explosives for him to blow up.

Anyways, I sneak into the caves past the monsters, surprisingly finding them unable to sense me. But it doesn\'t take me long to come to a realization that almost has me pausing mid-step.

The realization that I don\'t feel Chaos\'s presence in my mind anymore.

He\'s just gone.

I grit my teeth, only to sigh and continue walking through the caves.

Guess I\'m truly on my own this time, except for my messages with Blake.